Lets see what time is it 
Ah yeah, is “time to say what civs can and can’t be added o’clock”
There is no “limited resources” if they want they can add all the civs in the world (in that time period)
This isn’t age2 where people complains about “too much civs”, what kind of a problem is even that?, the more civs the better, is not like they are making the balance changes
Anyways
A Korea standalone civ with a rework of China and Japan is my bet to what they are going to do
Like if you reaaaally wanna play the “uwu they were colonized that completely invalidates them as a country” argument… well, Brunei is still there. Like it’s never been a colony it’s just still there.
Sure it’s a tiny country but that hadn’t always been the case.
So even that argument falls flat when talking about Malays.
你是在回应我吗？说实话，我没太看明白你在说什么。我讨论到殖民地的问题了吗？还是说你回错人了？
I was replying to…
Yes, the thing is that at this time, even with the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, Indonesia was occupied by the Dutch… at most they could improve the Indonesian Revolution with more cards and UUs…
OK, my apologies. I received an email notification saying that you had replied to my post, so I assumed you had responded. It seems there may be some issue with the forum’s notification system. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I would support Persia, Siam, and Burma.
Korea? I think it’s similar to Mongolia. While it has cultural uniqueness, its indigenous tribes are a better fit. It didn’t exert much influence from maritime colonization to the Industrial Revolution; it was constantly invaded.
If it’s joining just to make money off Koreans, I wouldn’t object. However, I don’t think it has any advantages that would make it a worthy contender from among the candidate countries.
Yes, it’s just that Korea is such a classic civilization in the series that it’s hard to leave it out… besides, you could put it in a DLC with Vietnam and you’d still get something… many of us feel that a true Age of Empires game absolutely needs to have Persia and Korea…
Do they give you guys a script?
It’s amusing how most Chinese are against adding Koreans being a civ by suggesting Burmese instead while most non-Chinese are the exact opposite.
I want both Burmese and Koreans as civs in the game.
首先我并不代表大多数中国人。如果你观察中国最大的帝国时代三社区，也就是百度贴吧帝国3吧。你会发现大多数人想到的候补亚洲文明也都是朝鲜，而不是缅甸、越南、暹罗，甚至是西亚的国家，对他们来说太陌生了。
之所以这样，和西方人一样，是因为大多数中国人也不了解除了东亚以外的其他文化。而西方人之所以对东亚比较了解，是因为中日韩三个国家在国际的巨大影响力。
所以，我之所以想为这些经常被忽略的国家发声，是因为我认为它们在《帝国时代 III》所涵盖的那个历史时期，都是军事上相当强大的国家。
它们之所以在今天相对不那么受关注，很大程度上只是因为它们在当代的国际影响力，以及文化、政治等方面的影响力相对有限。但这并不能抹杀它们在那个时代曾经拥有的实力、地位和历史重要性。
我认为，《帝国时代 III》既然是在表现那个时代的世界，就不应该仅仅根据一个文明在今天的知名度或国际影响力来决定它是否值得加入游戏。否则，很多在当时真正强大、具有重要历史地位的文明，反而会因为今天“不够出名”而被忽略。
First of all, I don’t represent the majority of Chinese people. If you look at the largest Age of Empires III community in China, namely the AoE3 forum on Baidu Tieba, you’ll find that most people there also tend to think of Korea as the most obvious candidate for an additional Asian civilization, rather than Myanmar, Vietnam, Siam, or even countries from West Asia. Those cultures are simply much less familiar to them.
The reason for this is similar to why Westerners tend to be more familiar with East Asia: most Chinese people are also not very familiar with cultures outside East Asia. And the reason Westerners tend to know relatively more about East Asia is the enormous international influence of China, Japan, and South Korea.
So the reason I want to speak up for these often-overlooked countries is that I believe they were all militarily powerful states during the historical period covered by Age of Empires III.
The fact that they have relatively less influence today — whether in terms of international influence or cultural and political influence — does not erase how powerful and historically significant they were at the time.
I think we should be careful not to judge the historical importance of a civilization based solely on its influence in the modern world. A country or culture being less influential today does not mean that it was insignificant or weak during the period represented in the game.
Maybe Vietnam is well known too by western people like me cause the Vietnam War with USA, but yeah, I would prefer SEA countries to be explored first and to learn more about them.
And Persia!
Don’t look at me. I made a playable Philippines out of all places.
Yes, and in the saga, many Vietnamese players are AoE 1 players and a few from AoE 2 (hence the inclusion of Lac Viet in Return of Rome to attract them to AoE 2)… given that we’ve had Vietnamese players in AoE 2 since Rise of the Rajas 10 years ago, now it’s time to see them in AoE 3: the Le Dynasty (1428-1789) (starting with Le Loi after AoE 2), Tay Song (1789-1802), and Nguyen (1802-1884) (Gia Long unified the country in 1802 and by 1820 had expelled the Siamese from Cambodia and conquered that territory for Vietnam)…
Vietnam between 1820 and 1841
I would go for Burma and Siam first, which would use a new Southeast Asian architecture (the same as AoE 2), and then in another DLC, Vietnam and Korea (Vietnam would use the new SEA architecture and Korea would use the new SEA architecture). East Asian architecture (like China and Japan) (although they could end up going for the cheaper option of giving Indian architecture to Burma (and maybe Central Asian civs) and East Asian architecture to Siam, and then in another DLC, Vietnam and obviously Korea)…
Indian archictecture for Burma (and maybe Central Asian civs)
East Asian archictecture for Siam, Vietnam and Korea…
I hope not, I hate asset recycling.
Just gonna say, if we get another DLC after the Baltic one I’d like to see Korea and Persia probably. The far west and east of Asia as it were.
Korea obviously wasn’t a military superpower, but it has a better historical claim to be in the game than some civs already in the game and has the name id and cool units to sell. Even if you say another civ has a better historical claim, it’s more important for the longevity of the game to sell copies. Turtle ships and the Hwacha would allow for some very unique gameplay (based on what already exists).
Persia also has a lot of name id and would play very differently than Korea (which increases the likelihood that each player will want to play with something from the DLC).
Civs around both Persia and Korea could get a little updating as well.
I actually agree with you about Persia and Korea.
First of all, I think Persia is one of the biggest missing pieces in AoE3. If the game never gets Persia, I personally feel that its representation of early-modern Asia will always be incomplete. So if the developers decide to add Persia, I would strongly support it.
As for Korea, I want to clarify something: I have never argued that Korea should not be added. Quite the opposite. I completely understand why Korea is an attractive candidate. The Turtle Ship and the Hwacha (火車) are both highly recognizable and could provide a very distinctive gameplay experience if designed well.
What I am actually trying to discuss is a slightly different question: why is Korea almost always the first answer Western players give when they talk about “the next Asian civilization”? I think the reason is quite understandable. China, Japan and Korea have enormous cultural visibility in the modern Western world. They have become three of the most recognizable East Asian cultures in the Western imagination.
So Western players naturally know more about their history as well. They have spent much more time digging through Chinese, Japanese and Korean history looking for “cool things” — unusual weapons, unique units, special buildings and interesting mechanics that could work in a strategy game.
There is nothing wrong with that. But it creates a feedback loop. Because these countries are well known, Western players study them more. Because they study them more, they discover more interesting things. And because they discover more interesting things, these civilizations seem even more naturally suited to strategy games.
That is the cycle I am trying to break.
If you actually look at Asian history between roughly the 16th and 19th centuries, you find a much larger and more diverse world. There were Persia, the Durrani Empire, the Marathas, the Sikh Empire, the Burmese kingdoms, Siam, Vietnam, and numerous Central Asian states, among many others. Many of these were major political and military powers of their time.
And this is the point I really want to emphasize: “Having cool unique units” is not a special advantage of China, Japan or Korea.
If you seriously study almost any civilization, you can find unusual, visually distinctive and historically fascinating things that could become great game mechanics.
The difference is that we have already spent an enormous amount of time digging through Chinese, Japanese and Korean history looking for these things. We have not done the same with many other Asian civilizations. That is what I want people to notice.
The Hwacha itself is a particularly interesting example, because it shows not only how games select historical “cool things”, but also how games can reshape historical memory.
Civilization III was released in 2001, and Korea’s unique unit was the Hwacha. It subsequently appeared in later Civilization games and became a very recognizable Korean historical symbol among strategy-game players around the world. But if you go back to Korean Internet culture before 2001, there is a very interesting phenomenon.
If you searched for “화차” in older Korean webpages, the results could be quite confusing. “화차” could refer to the historical Hwacha (花茶), but it could also be confused with “화차” in other meanings, including freight or cargo vehicles (貨車). In other words, the historical weapon was not necessarily an immediately recognizable term in ordinary modern Korean usage.
This does not mean that Koreans as a whole were unaware of the historical Hwacha. It simply illustrates how obscure the term could be outside specialist historical contexts. There is even a particularly interesting discussion from 2002 on a Civilization III forum in which a participant who said he had grown up in Korea and studied Korean history stated that he had never heard of the Hwacha before. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/korean-special-unit.39089/
Again, one person’s experience obviously cannot represent an entire country. But the timing is fascinating: it happened shortly after Civilization III had popularized the Hwacha as Korea’s unique unit.
China has similar examples. Before Age of Empires III and other modern strategy games and historical media brought them to a wider audience, things such as the Shenhuo Feiya (神火飛鴉) and Menghuo Yougui (猛火油柜) were extremely obscure to ordinary Chinese people. Specialists and history enthusiasts certainly knew about them, but they were not part of everyday historical consciousness.
This creates an interesting cultural cycle. A relatively obscure historical weapon is rediscovered by Western historians and game developers. It is turned into a distinctive game unit. It becomes a window through which Western players learn about Korean military history. And eventually it becomes much more prominent in modern Korean historical and national narratives as well.
This is also why I think the Hwacha should be placed within the broader history of East Asian gunpowder technology. Hwacha is a rocket luncher weapon with Korean characteristics, but it is actually no different from other rocket luncher weapons in the East Asian context. it was not an isolated technological phenomenon unique to Korea. It belonged to a much broader East Asian tradition of rockets and gunpowder weapons.
China had already developed a large variety of rocket weapons during earlier periods, and by the Ming period there were many different types and scales of multiple-rocket systems. There were smaller weapons such as the Yiwofeng (一窩蜂). There were medium-sized systems such as the Jiahuo Zhanche (架火戰車), also known as Huoxiangche (火廂車), as well as various rocket carts and frame-mounted launchers. There were also larger weapons such as the Shenhuo Feiya (神火飛鴉).
The Ming military also established the Shenji Battalion (神機營), and the term “Shenji” (神機) later appeared in the military terminology of other East Asian societies.
The important point here is not that one country was “better” than another. The point is that gunpowder technology circulated throughout East Asia, and Korea developed these technologies within its own military environment. So the Hwacha should not be understood as an isolated Korean technological miracle. It is better understood as a Korean development within a much broader regional tradition.
This is also reflected in the way modern historical strategy games sometimes represent these weapons. For example, in Age of Empires IV, China’s distinctive rocket artillery unit is the Nest of bees (一窩蜂), rather than a weapon presented as something uniquely Korean. Likewise, in the newer content for Age of Empires II, multiple-rocket weapons are represented as part of a broader East Asian mainland military tradition rather than being treated as an exclusively Korean technology.
That is actually a very useful way to understand the history: Hwacha can be a distinctively Korean unit while this kind of weapon still belonging to a much broader technological tradition shared across the East Asian mainland. And this actually makes the history more interesting, not less.
There is also an important distinction between being visually impressive and being militarily effective. Many traditional East Asian rocket weapons were spectacular and ingenious, but they also had significant practical limitations, especially in accuracy, reliability and trajectory control. Their psychological and battlefield effects could certainly be useful, but they were not necessarily comparable to later generations of firearms and artillery in terms of precision and destructive power.
And this is where the European firearms revolution becomes important. From the 16th century onward, East Asian states increasingly encountered European-style firearms and artillery. Japan rapidly adopted and mass-produced the arquebus. Ming China increasingly adopted European-style artillery and firearms, including weapons such as the Frankish cannon (佛郎機) and later Hongyi cannon (紅夷炮). As these weapons became more widespread, many traditional rocket systems rapidly lost their position as important battlefield technologies.
It was a broader transformation affecting traditional East Asian gunpowder weapons in general. I am not saying that the Hwacha was uniquely ineffective, nor am I trying to portray traditional Korean military technology as somehow inferior. The same basic limitation applied to many Chinese rocket weapons as well. Weapons such as the Yiwofeng, Jiahuo Zhanche and Shenhuo Feiya could be fascinating and sometimes useful, but compared with increasingly mature European firearms and artillery, their practical military advantages were limited.
So when I say that the Hwacha was eventually made obsolete by newer firearms and artillery, I am not trying to “debunk” Korea. I am simply putting it into the broader history of the technological transition from traditional East Asian gunpowder weapons to early-modern firearms and artillery.
The Hwacha can still be an excellent game unit. But its uniqueness as a game unit should not make us assume that it was a uniquely advanced military technology. And this is exactly why I think we should be careful about using a few famous “cool units” as the main reason for choosing civilizations.
If you seriously investigate other Asian civilizations, you will find plenty of equally interesting technologies, military traditions and historical stories. Persia has them. The Durrani Empire has them. The Marathas have them. The Sikh Empire has them. Vietnam has them. Burma has them. Siam has them. Central Asia has them. They are not lacking in “cool things”. They simply have not received the same amount of attention from Western popular history and strategy games.
So my position is actually very simple: I am not objection to adding Korea. I strongly support adding Persia, and I think Persia is one of the civilizations AoE3 most urgently needs.
But I also hope that when we talk about “Asia”, we do not automatically stop at China, Japan and Korea.
Those civilizations are not the entirety of Asian history. If we are willing to look beyond the civilizations we already know well, I think we will discover that the rest of Asia has just as much potential to provide unique and interesting gameplay.
That is really the point I am trying to make.
I think that your points are clear enough! Great insight, BTW
Thank you for understanding! I really appreciate it. There was someone who focusing on my nationality and taking my criticism as some kind of racism or hatred toward Koreans, which made me feel quite misunderstood.
I’d like to first say, you replied with a very long post. Apologies for not reading all of it, but my main point can be stated responding to this part.
I think the Baltic DLC is probably the last one we get. I think they are working on “finishing the game” before they cancel it, maybe with some ongoing bug fixing (and all things considered, that wouldn’t be terrible).
But if AoE3 is going to continue a content cycle, the game needs DLC sales to continue to exist. There’s speculation that the African DLC didn’t sell well, and what I’ll point out is that neither of the civs are “culturally big” in the West. Any argument for lesser known civs IMO fails to the risk that they don’t make the money they spent back on a DLC and therefore cancel the game again, leaving it in a lurch with bugs and serious balance issues. They already cancelled the game so I suspect the bar for doing it again might be lower.
Your entire argument is built on speculation and pessimism though.
You can’t argue we shouldn’t do something because you think that maybe a similar precedent may not have done well, that’s irrational fear.
Not to mention, and I think this should be obvious, us, as in the fanbase, isn’t calling the shots.
Also saying that Iran or Vietnam are not as known in the west is a fundamentally unserious argument.
